Various Techniques in Summarizing a Variety of Academic Texts

Summarizing is considered as a process of taking information from a comparatively longer chapter,

theory, or write-up and creating a smaller version of it that covers all the facts and main points of the
original version. An example of summarizing is to write a three to four sentence description that covers
all the main points of a story or poem.

According to Buckley 2004 – in her popular writing text fit to print, summarizing is reducing text to one-
third or one-quarter its original size, clearly articulating the authors meaning and retaining main ideas

According to Diane Hacker (2008) – summarizing involves stating a work’s thesis and main ideas
“simply, briefly, and accurately.

Various Techniques in Summarizing a Variety of Academic Texts:

Three Important Summarization Techniques

There are three important summarization techniques. They are selection, rejection and substitution.
They are discussed hereunder.

Selection : It is essential to select major idea, key words and phrases, special terms and interpretations
presented in the original resource.

Rejection : It is a process of removing unnecessary data. As cited earlier, try to reject repetitions,
examples, illustrations, anecdotes, redundant, expressions, tables and statistical data.

Substitution : Basically it includes synthesis. It is a mode of combining several sentences into one
sentence. It is recommended to use sentence substitutions, short sentences to replace lengthy
sentences.

Another 5 easy techniques in summarizing various academic text:

Someday Wanted But So Then - Is an excellent summarizing strategy for stories each word represents a
key question related to the story’s essential elements.

SAAC METHOD - Is an acronym for STATE ASSIGN ACTION AND COMPLETE , each word in the acronyms
refers to specific element that should be included in the summary.

5 W’s, 1 H: -A strategy relies on six crucial questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how. These
questions make it easy to identify the main character, the important details, and the main idea.

First, Then, Finally -This technique helps you summarize events in chronological order. The three words
represent the beginning, main action, and conclusion of a story, respectively
Give Me the Gist -When someone asks for “the gist” of a story they want to know what the story is
about in other words they want a summary not a retelling of every detail.

Additional techniques:

1. Read the work first to understand the author’s intent.

2. Present information through facts, skills and concept in visual formats.
3. Know the main points and the supporting details. (Exclude any illustrations, examples, or
explanations)
4. Analyze the text to save time
5. Think what information you will put in your summary.
6. Restate the words into different one. Use your own vocabulary but be sure to retain the
information.
7. Organize all ideas.
8. Write down all information in a coherent and precise form. AVOID making it long
9. Represent information through using dimensional constructions in representing concepts, skills,
or facts.
10. Paraphase
Do not use the same words with the authors.

Why Use Summarizing?

It acts as a great help for students to learn how to determine essential ideas and find out different
details that can support those ideas and make them more useful.

It helps the students to improve their focusing skills so that they can focus on phrases and keywords
from the assigned long text. They focus on parts that are worth noting or remembering.

A student learns how to convert a large text into a small text. The short text has to comprise all the main
points that are in the long text for a proper and concise understanding

Importance of Summarizing:

Summarizing is of great importance for students to prosper in their careers as it improves their
vocabulary and grammatical skills. Students who can adequately summarize a long text are good at
focusing and extracting the main ideas. This is why summarizing is important.